Monday, April 29, 2013

The start of Eden Hazard’s career with Chelsea might best be
described as bimodal.

After a £32-million summer transfer from the 2011 French
Champions Lille, Hazard began the season lauded as perhaps the best Belgian in
a league full of ‘em. But his form slumped
around the time his club entered the mid-season depression that cost Champions
League winning manager Roberto Di Matteo his position and recovered only in the
early months of this year.

Yet when one takes a look at the nominees for the PFA Player
of the Year award and now that same organisation’s Team of the Year sees him line
up behind Robin van Persie. He has been
touted for a superlative season, but hasn’t produced at the same level we expected
after his glistening
start.

Both seem a bit rich.
Hazard is unquestionably an incredibly talented player, but has
performed rather inconsistently in the English Premiership – he is capable of
outstanding performances but has remained somewhat anonymous in other matches,
perhaps a function of Chelsea’s attempt to shoehorn three
pesky creative types into one outfit.
While statistics only tell half the story, Mata has indeed had the
superior season.

Was his selection in the Team of the Year a product of a
lack of alternative options? Given his
peers voted him one of the best six players in the country, that’s a long bow
to draw – it’s clear that the Premier League rank and file deem him a player to be respected. Nevertheless, he made
the celebrated team at
the expense of players of whom it could be easily argued had better seasons
like Arsenal’s Santi Cazorla or Swansea City superbargain Michu.

The love-in surrounding Hazard’s debut English season has
begun and history will say that it was a fine one, replete with awards. But that doesn’t do him justice – he could be
one of the five greatest players in the world and that hasn’t been reflected in
the totality of his performances this year.
This year, he has been very-good-but-not-great, perhaps only displaying eighty percent of his formidable skill. But does a player who only engages (even) a fraction of his ability truly deserve a position in such an esteemed team?

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Following Sergio Agüero’s … enthusiastic … challenge upon
David Luiz’s hindquarters during this weekend’s FA Cup Semi-Final, the issue of
crude tackles has once again been thrust into football’s spotlight.

The incident – which you can view below – appears to show the Argentine
beaten for a ball by Luiz, who goes to ground.
Agüero’s response is to go to ground himself, cleats first and no matter
whose butt was lay in his way. The
result: a free kick to the Blues.

Should a player commit a poor foul, it is FA policy –
barring “special circumstances” – to avoid further punishing players for such
infractions. It is their position that
retrospective action would undermine a referee’s control of the game. This posture assumes of course that the
referee had control (and adequate sight-lines) in the first place.

It’s time for that rule to change. To avoid serious injuries as a result of
unduly rough play, the FA needs to seriously consider retrospective
punishment. That Agüero – and
Callum McManaman – escaped serious punishment for poorly executed or
deliberate feet-first contact is galling and it’s fortunate that their victims
weren’t more seriously injured.

It is a paramount duty of Football Associations to ensure
player safety. In order to do so, perhaps
inspiration can come from the Australian Football League. In the late 1980s, this competition
instituted a “trial-by-video” system to eliminate rampant behind the play
violence and to compensate for incidents the officiating umpires might have
missed. In so doing injuries as a result
of player violence by dint of negligence or vindictiveness has been reduced
markedly.

In the AFL, each case is
judged according to a penal matrix which assigns a points value to the
incident’s intent (which can be graded intentional, reckless, negligent or
accidental), impact (deemed severe, high, medium, low, negligible) and point of
contact (was it to the head, groin or body?).
Players who score highly – for example a deliberate punch to the face of
an opponent – are in line to receive far harsher sanctions than someone who
negligently knees a player to the ribs.
Penalties are then meted out according to a similar system, with good or
bad behavior bonds and early guilty pleas serving as multipliers.

Precedents are inadmissible evidence, meaning every player
receives the same judgment. More
importantly, each player are charged with protecting player safety and made
aware this duty of care is expected of them.

For football, the point of contact might be adapted to assess how high
up the “target” player’s leg impact occurs.

With such a system, Agüero’s challenge might be assessed as
reckless, medium and to the upper leg, thus earning a moderately severe ban.

Football Associations across the globe must do more to
ensure player safety and avoid cases like Ben
Collett, Aaron Ramsey and Eduardo.
This is one way to empower players in taking charge of their own
on-field security. There has been one
incident too many.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Maybe, just maybe, this is the year that Cardiff City can break their five-year playoff hoodoo and finally earn promotion to the Premier League. Few would argue that they're deserving - the Bluebirds Dragons have finished thereabouts in English football's second tier for half a decade as well appearing at Wembley in FA and League Cup Finals - yet seem always to develop a flopsweat of Nixonian proportions during the season's most crucial weeks.

Cardiff and their rivals for automatic promotion - at this stage, mainly a rejuvenated Hull City and Gianfranco Zola's time-shared Watford squad - are without question the best three teams the Championship have to offer. As an added bonus and in contrast to some other upstarts ascendent, all three should also have the resources to make a splash should they rise into the the Premiership, albeit through vastly different methods.

The peloton features PYTs of management, Gus Poyet and Dougie Freedman (whose current and ex-clubs find themselves in the chase). It should come as no surprise that a surging Nottingham Forest - with their demonstrable playoff chops - find themselves firmly ensconced in fifth position.

Each team has its own narrative: Cardiff's collection of close misses, the Return of the King at Forest and even an Egyptian connection at Hull City made especially poignant by that country's recent football history. The Premier League will be a richer - and more curious - league for their impending presence.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

When they loaned Andros Townsend to QPR in late January,
Tottenham Hotspur sat fourth in the Premiership and could be well satisfied
with their past two months. After taking
nineteen points from a possible thirty, they looked forward to a February
facing strictly mid-table clubs.

With Gareth
Bale and Aaron Lennon offering a pincer attack in outstanding form – and Clint
Dempsey, Lewis Holtby and Gylfi Sigurdsson available as well – the club
presumably felt they could afford the luxury of allowing the youngster to grow
by playing Premier League football regularly.

He has become – without question – Rangers’ most important
player; moreover, he has shown why Harry Redknapp (who, curiously, largely
ignored him while at Spurs) took him on a rental across London. Over the past month Townsend has been the
dominant player in the Premiership, regularly beating opponents for pace and
guile before swinging crosses into threatening positions.

His seven games in hoops have borne out two scores, an
assist and three Player of the Match nods in his past four matches. The streak has left him, according to the reputable WhoScored.com,
with a cumulative Player Rating for his QPR spell of a stratospheric 7.83.

Left backs both experienced and fleet-of-foot have been preyed
upon: his Loftus Road locker boasts the heads of Javier Garrido, Rafael, Danny
Rose, Matthew
Lowton, John Arne Riise and most recently, Maynor Figueroa.

While hard to fathom after a gut-wrenching
draw on the weekend, Townsend could prove the difference between the Hoops’
survival and relegation. Should Rs stay
up – and save owner Tony Fernandes at least £25 million – it will be on Townsend’s
back.

Although figures that size aren’t to be sniffed at, Townsend’s
true value might be felt more by his parent club. Since rising to third in the league in
February, Spurs have struggled to cement entry into next year’s Champions
League. While a lack of strikers has
been implicit
to this shakiness, the team has struggled more since the
loss of Lennon – and now Bale – to injury.

Neither Dempsey nor Sigurdsson are as inclined to create for
others as for themselves, meaning forward thrusts at White Hart Lane – and,
more crucially, away from home – have lacked the incision and penetration of
the past six months. This has only been
compounded by the Bale-shaped void on the left wing. The impetus that marked Spurs’ outstanding form
of early 2013 is obvious for its absence.

Should Spurs falter further in the season’s waning weeks,
they risk the riches of Europe’s premier competition – which is where missing Townsend
really begins to hurt. Although
estimates vary, Champions League group-stage entrants can expect to receive
windfalls of a
minimum £16 million plus income from extra home games. Clubs who progress to the Elimination stages could
stand to collect up to another £25 million.

Should Spurs’ absent forwards mean they finish out of UCL
contention while Townsend leads Rangers to an unlikely continued existence in
the top division, the net turnaround could be as much as £42 million. While no-one was to know Townsend was capable
of replicating his QPR form with Tottenham – the game of “What if” is appropriate
only in MathNet
– this swing puts him alongside a certain other West Londoner as the only Premiership
players worth over £40 million.

More correctly, we ask what would constitute a a successful season for Benitez in a personal sense. With free agency looming, Occam's Razor suggests he will only leave the club satisfied should he add trophies to his resume. The Premiership is gone, perhaps even before he arrived, meaning a successful season for Rafael Benitez depends upon twinned FA Cup/Europa League wins.

Rafael Benitez is firmly cognizant that he has to leave Chelsea with something (or things) to show for an eventful six months.

Even were he to available to boss the Blues next season, he would have to hang his hat on Cups competition, because he has led the Blues to rather haphazard league form: predecessor Roberto Di Matteo averaged 2.0 points per contest this term while Rafa's Blues have managed only 1.72.

However, he has propelled them relatively easily into the latter stages of both remaining Cups competitions - to the extent that there are suggestions that he is deliberately focusing not on an administratively-desired Top Four position, but on collecting as much silverware as possible.

Should Chelsea qualify for the Big Dance next year - no matter if it's in third position or fourth - Benitez can proudly and justifiably say to any future employers that he signed off on three deliverables for his Russian plutocrat. However, he must be well aware that multiple Europa League titles and FA Cup wins read better to potential employers than their solitary equivalents won half a decade ago or more.

If - and, at this stage we can only say if - Benitez is disregarding his current employer to make himself more desirable to future payors, then this is a passive-aggressive game of chicken for the ages. Should it pay dividends, he automatically puts himself in the frame for some of the plum jobs in Europe; if not, he sleeps with management fishes.

While the Blues hold onto the all-important UCL qualifying position and remain in contention for two further trophies, Benitez's short reign must be seen as a tacit success. However, should they drop the ball in all three competitions - an unlikely but possible "accomplishment" - then Rafael Benitez will become more toxic than he was before arriving in West London.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Yesterday, Moises Henriques – he
of three recent Tests against India – was ignored
by Cricket Australia in their list of twenty centrally-contracted
players. He was ostensibly passed over
for young Tasmania all-rounder James Faulkner, who earned his first Australia
contract at age 22.

Although this isn't to detract from Faulkner's joy (he probably deserves the position), Henriques can justifiably feel rather miffed. Although he struggled for much
of the Border-Gavaskar series, he performed admirably during his debut Test, scoring
149 across two innings and taking 1/48 from seventeen mid-standard overs
with the ball. Although he only managed
a further seven runs on tour, but he deserves some credence as these fifties were
two of only twelve half-century-plus scores by Australians for the tour. (Five of which were by players on tour for
their ability with the ball – two each by Siddle and Henriques, and Mitch Starc’s
99).

Let’s leave aside, for the
moment, the remarkable fact that CA breaks up their centrally contracted group
of 20 players relatively evenly across three formats rather than focusing on the
game’s highest form, Test cricket. Let’s
instead examine the message that this contract list sends.

It is yet another example of institutional
flip-flopping by the Cricket Australia selection panel. While Blind Freddy and his dog clamoured for
the removal of Andrew Hilditch, the current National Selection Panel has been
just as – if not more – inconsistent: players are called up only to be
discarded one or two Tests later. All
that remains is to then be completely forgotten.

With Australia’s Test cricket
history stretching to 136 years, it’s damning that over 8 percent of all players
ever to pull on a Baggy Green have debuted since 2007.

This is in polar contrast to the
last three occasions in which Australia has had to build a team after
debilitating setbacks. On those three
occasions (post-1984, in 1977-78 and in 1964), the hierarchy set about identifying
players of talent enough to build a team around. The players identified in that most recent
down period – Dean Jones, Steve Waugh, Craig McDermott and Bruce Reid – ushered
in those wonderful nineties.

This time, Australia has
identified no-one around which they can build but Michael Clarke and a
promising crop of fast bowlers. Perhaps
this is due to a lack of talent, but it’s more likely this is a consequence of an
itchy trigger finger.

If the ultimate leadership of
James Sutherland and the National Selection Panel are this inconsistent, the
role of Michael Clarke, Mickey Arthur and Pat Howard is suddenly thrust from
team-building to constant team integration – and hence, discipline like that
famously which was infamously dispensed in Mohali. Given his role in team selection – and the
rather Draconian methods they favour – Clarke
and Arthur are hardly blameless, but with such a shifting player base any
concept of a unified team identity is just that – a concept.

That the selectors can't - or won't - narrow their player pool down to a promising, deserving touring part is damning and leaves more questions for themselves, and for Cricket Australia.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

In appointing Paolo Di Canio as Sunderland manager, owner
Ellis Short not only fell victim to the “Contrast Theory” but has actively
embraced it.

The theory is simple, and has its origins in time
immemorial. When replacing an
underperforming manager, simply make your next selection his polar opposite: freewheelers
replace tacticians. Teachers replace
“player’s coaches”; experience dismissed for youth that presages change e’er
longed-for.

This contrast doesn’t get much more pronounced than this
week’s changeover at the helm of the Black Cats. Martin O’Neill – dear, staid, true, predictable
and downtrodden Martin O’Neill – is gone, replaced by the fiery Di Canio. For much of the season the Mackems have
appeared short of ideas: O’Neill has been chief among the bewildered as his
tried-and-tested methods shuffled his emotionless team towards relegation.

After an initial dead-cat
bounce, the old coaching methods that O’Neill had employed with success over
two decades with Wycombe, Leicester City, Celtic and Aston Villa proved
ineffectual at Sunderland. As his men
became almost entirely inoffensive, O’Neill appeared a forlorn man adhering to
tactics well past their sell-by date: defenders stop the ball, forwards shoot it
and midfielders move the ball between the two as efficiently as possible.

This theory still holds water – just, and if you squint – but,
in practicality, is often exposed by the more fluid systems now en vogue throughout the EPL.

Di Canio is everything that Martin O’Neill was not. He favours a remarkably
fit team of young, hungry players. Although
he often played 4-4-2 at Swindon Town, he enjoyed the most success after
shifting to an unorthodox formation.
He is flexible, young and hungry: three traits which hardly described O’Neill’s
Wearside tenure.

He is also unflinchingly controversial, although references to his political beliefs may be somewhat overstated.

However, whether Di Canio’s furious affect
will work in the Premiership is still up for debate - the spectacular fallout
from another talent of the nineties, Paul Ince, after moving from League One to
the top flight ended amidst a flurry of self-styled
“Guv’nor” tactics which endeared him to neither his players, nor his employers.

Ellis Short has gambled that a controversial extrovert will
be more effective in dodging relegation than persevering with a man who
patently enjoyed only middling success.
O’Neill was an appointment tailored specifically to the situation in
which Sunderland found themselves seventeen months past; Di Canio is a man chosen
directly to address this predicament with this playing group. How that dressing-shed cadre responds is now,
quite literally, the £64 million question.